The vestibular system of the inner ear enables one to perceive body position and movement. In an effort to assess the integrity of the vestibular system, it is often useful to test its performance. Such tests are often carried out at a vestibular clinic.
Vestibular clinics typically measure reflexive responses like balance or the vestibulo-ocular reflex to diagnose a subject's vestibular system. The vestibulo-ocular reflex (“VOR”) is one in which the eyes rotate in an attempt to stabilize an image on the retina. Since the magnitude and direction of the eye rotation depend on the signal provided by the vestibular system, observations of eye rotation provide a basis for inferring the state of the vestibular system.
In typical measurements, one stimulates the vestibular system multiple times and observes the resulting VOR. This results in a set of VOR measurements that are then processed to eliminate the harmful effects of noise in the measurements. The resulting averaged VOR data, once as much noise as possible has been removed, provides a basis for predicting whether or not a vestibular disorder exists.